The past two years have been one of extreme change and hardship: Amidst a global-wide pandemic emerging, and drastic noise in the Black Lives Matter movement.
As everyone should know, the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against all racially motivated violence and crime against black people, and drawing eyes to the horrific incidents of police brutality against black people. This movement, according to The New York Times, may be the largest movement in United States history. Suggesting that about 15 to 26 million people in the United States have participated or shown out in demonstrations of the death of Travon Martin, George Floyd, and countless others. These numbers do not begin to include surrounding countries in support of the movement.
The freedoms of the First Amendment are extreme workers when looking to empower change. These freedoms protect our beliefs, our ideas, and most importantly, our ability to vocalize these ideas to inspire others. It allows us to vocalize these ideas in the press, assemble others among these ideas, and provenly, start a movement.
With a prominent online ability, the movement reached more people than it could've without it. Petitions began online, and people of each major city were reached and invited to no longer sit in silence, but to reveal their support and their frustration with the horrible injustices that have been, for too long, occurring in our world.
It has, then, been reported at multiplicity that even those who showed their support online were systematically silenced. Many people had their posts, or even their entire profiles flagged and removed due to a "violation of community guidelines". An article from Buzzfeed News shares the story of an activist, Doran, who had her personal page removed for "spam", due to practicing her right to freedom of speech. She explained, "Black folks are talking about their experiences in this country right now, and they are being systematically silenced" (BuzzFeed News).
However, there have been a series of conflicts that arise from this movement. Thus, raising the question of just how far our freedoms can go or how much of them we can access. According to the Press Freedom Tracker, in the year 2020, there were about 1,000 incidents reported of aggression against the press, including denial of access, equipment damage, physical attacks, and over 120 arrests. Most importantly, there have been clear and horrifying violations of a peaceful assembly, where several protestors in several major cities, were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, at the fault of our own "protectors" and government.
The most surprising thing that I learned so far in the BLM movement, among the countless violations of our First Amendment rights, is that so many that are protesting don't know their complete rights. The Free Speech center explains, "Only one in 10 Americans know that assembly is one of our First Amendment freedoms- but the public definitely knows how to exercise this right" (Free Speech Center).
With this, I found an extraordinary article, laminating the major takeaways from this movement, that with at the rate of our world, sadly, has no end in sight. The article is linked below.
https://www.mtsu.edu:8443/first-amendment/post/837/5-takeaways-from-the-black-lives-matter-protests
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-silencing-black-lives-matter-activists
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html
https://firstamendmentmuseum.org/the-power-of-protest/
No comments:
Post a Comment